KISS it goodbye: fan ready to sell collection

Friday

Mar 14, 2014 at 6:00 AMMar 14, 2014 at 6:24 AM

John Provost speaks of his KISS collection as a kind of sanctuary in which he's still a 10-year-old boy happily enthralled by the face paint, flaming guitars and blood-spitting stage theatrics that inspired him to take up the drums.

By Thomas Caywood TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — Early this week, a man who claimed to be calling from Chicago told a Telegram & Gazette editor that he had a hot story tip about a remarkable collection of rock 'n' roll history for sale in Worcester.

The call actually had come from just a few miles away, from a cluttered apartment in a public housing complex on May Street.

There was a story to be told indeed, but not the one the caller was pushing.

The story turned out to be about the potent connection between objects and emotions and about the joy and isolation one city man found inside his own "rock 'n' roll heaven."

The pushy "Chicago" man on the other end of the telephone line that day was John Provost of Worcester, an unemployed memorabilia collector and super fan of the '70s rock band KISS.

When confronted by a Telegram reporter, Mr. Provost sheepishly admitted the dishonest public relations ruse. He said he hadn't been lying, however, about wanting to sell a large KISS collection, in part to buy a car for his mother.

While the 47-year-old Worcester native's extravagant claims about the value of the collection, which he claims is a bargain at $38,000, and even why he wants to sell it might be suspect, there's no denying its existence.

In Mr. Provost's chaotic living room, the blood-red tongue of KISS frontman Gene Simmons waggles from all sides — from posters on the walls, album covers stacked knee-high on the floor and toy guitars lined up on top of the couch.

Mr. Provost owns four KISS lunchboxes, an unopened deck of KISS playing cards, a KISS transistor radio and KISS brand condoms. He even has the rare KISS Your Face makeup kit, one of the notoriously commercial New York band's first forays into merchandising.

"When I come home, I see something that makes me happy. I see something that has always meant so much to me," Mr. Provost said. "This is my love."

Just listening to the music was never enough for him. Just like watching Red Sox games wasn't enough for him as a baseball fan. He festooned a red sedan, which he also tried to sell, with Red Sox logos and pictures of the World Series trophy. He has since switched his automotive theme to KISS.

Mr. Provost's left upper arm is tattooed with the signature of original KISS drummer Peter Criss. Mr. Provost said he got Mr. Criss to autograph his arm with a marker at a concert in Nashville, then drove straight to a tattoo parlor to have the drummer's signature permanently inked into his flesh.

Mr. Provost speaks of his KISS collection as a kind of sanctuary in which he's still a 10-year-old boy happily enthralled by the face paint, flaming guitars and blood-spitting stage theatrics that inspired him to take up the drums.

"It was the uniqueness. The look. The image," explained KISS fan John Saner of Gardner. "They were just really different. Nobody else had done all that."

Mr. Saner, an emergency room nurse at St. Vincent Hospital who doesn't know Mr. Provost, became a lifelong KISS fan as a middle-schooler in the late '80s. He still loves the music today and plays Gene Simmons in KISS Forever, a local tribute band.

Ken Carson, manager of the That's Entertainment comic book shop in Worcester, was never a KISS fan himself, but he understands well the impulse to assemble artifacts that other people might dismiss as mere junk.

"Collecting is all about making a deeper connection to something you love," Mr. Carson explained. "The more you can immerse yourself in those artifacts, the more you can immerse yourself in the good feelings that the band or sports team or whatever it is arouses in you."

Mr. Provost said it's hard for him to imagine not being surrounded with his beloved KISS memorabilia, like the splintered scrap of Paul Stanley's smashed guitar from a 1996 Dallas concert. He claims to own more than 20,000 KISS items collected over nearly four decades.

Asked which piece of memorabilia is his favorite or the most significant, he fell uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Then a pained expression crossed his face.

"I want to say Paul's guitar that I caught. No, the KISS record player. Oh, I have a KISS bedspread too," he said proudly.

As much pleasure as he finds in it, Mr. Provost concedes the collection also sets him apart as an outsider, as "that KISS guy." People can be cruel about such differences.

He can recite breakup speeches he's heard from ex-girlfriends over the years off the top of his head: "You can't move around in your apartment. You're a grown man, but you act like a kid."

Mr. Provost said he's on disability after a car accident about three years ago in Nashville, where he used to live. A former drummer for rock and country bands, he said he feels well enough to play in a band again. He longs to get out and meet new people again. To make friends.

Part of his motivation to sell his KISS stuff, he said, is to buy a good drum set as well as car for his mom. And maybe a big-screen television too.

His hope to find a serious KISS collector like himself, or a theme restaurant, to buy the whole collection for tens of thousands of dollars seems optimistic bordering on delusional, which may be why he sought to gin up interest among local media by pretending to be a tipster with nothing to gain.

Mr. Provost now knows he may have to sell off his most prized pieces separately to raise any money.